


werewolf gimmick

by kosy



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Arguing, Everyone is Dead, Gen, Hall of Flame, Heel/Face Dichotomy, Irredeemable Jaylen Hotdogfingers, Season 10 Day X, Season/Series 10, The Trench, and they hate it!, fistfighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27954356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/kosy
Summary: He regards her for a long moment then chuckles, dry. “God, you’re a real piece of work, huh?” the guy says. “Why the hell’d they bringyouback, anyway?”“As opposed to who?You?”Jaylen asks, genuinely incredulous. “You think anyone up there even knows your name?”(In the Trench, moments before the stars of the Hall are called to the surface once more, the revenant speaks to a man who only ever lived in her shadow.)
Relationships: Jaylen Hotdogfingers & Derrick Krueger
Comments: 16
Kudos: 24





	werewolf gimmick

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to @crookedsaint for officially requesting/prompting "jaylen and derrick + things you said just to get the last word" after somebody made a joke about them fistfighting in the trench when i posted [my previous fic about them.](https://fourteenthidol.tumblr.com/post/636880957730848768/ik-this-isnt-a-ship-but-20-w-jaylen-and-the-other) god this was fun to write. my apologies to @baliset for what i did to mr. krueger.
> 
> content stuff: there's swearing in this. also, you know, violence. and general cruelty, because while jaylen's not a disney supervillain, _boy_ is she horrible in this one.
> 
> title's from "werewolf gimmick"; i looped "beat the champ" thru once while writing this and it shows. enjoy!

The guy from earlier is still looking at her funny. 

She’s sitting on the dugout bench watching the scoreboard through the pouring rain and pretending she’s not being watched in return. The hall of flame rankings are reminiscent of the idolboard, sort of. A lot of movement on it lately. Names going up and down fast. Hers jumped up to the top almost immediately after she got here. Something about tributes. Peanuts. She hadn’t paid much attention to it back while she was alive. It’s probably nothing good, Jaylen knows that much, but satisfaction curls ugly-warm inside her anyway as she watches her name go up yet another slot. 

The guy—another pitcher, she’s pretty sure—sighs loudly as it happens and she finally turns to him and stands, arms crossed. “Fine, I’ll fuckin’ bite. What’s your deal?”

The other pitcher glances up, brow raised, but doesn’t straighten up from where he’s sitting with his arms resting on his knees. “What do you mean my “deal”?” 

“Your whole—” She imitates the heavy sigh, nose wrinkled. “—thing. It’s fucking annoying and whatever this is, I wanna get it over with.” 

“There’s nothing to get over,” the guy says, infuriatingly measured. A chunk of his bangs flop into his eyes and he flicks them out of his face with a toss of the head. 

“What, pissed at me for getting so high on the board? ‘Cause you can just say so,” she scoffs, and she probably shouldn’t be picking at whatever this guy’s scab is, probably should just let him be and go back to pitching her game, but God, she’s itching for a real fight. It’s been too long. She’s not allowed to hit back anymore in the living world. Too much of a bad look. Nobody wants to see the murderer get in a fight and actually _win_. Losing to people like this guy has been the whole point of her for years now. 

He regards her for a long moment then chuckles, dry. “God, you’re a real piece of work, huh?” the guy says. “Why the hell’d they bring you back, anyway?” 

“As opposed to who? _You?”_ Jaylen asks, genuinely incredulous. “You think anyone up there even knows your name?” 

The guy glances toward the scoreboard and must not like what he sees because he breathes in hard and deep, like maybe he’s gonna start screaming at her— _that_ would be interesting, at least—but instead his brow furrows and he closes his mouth and then says, “Do _you_ know who I am?” 

“No,” she says, which is both true and satisfyingly cruel. “Should I?” His expression doesn’t change but there’s still something there that cracks, like she’s put her fist through some window inside him. She knows well enough what that looks like. 

He laughs, absolutely without humor. “Holy shit.” 

“Sorry,” she says unapologetically. 

“I thought you were just being an asshole, acting like you didn’t recognize me—”

“To be fair, that would be on brand of me,” Jaylen mutters, but he doesn’t seem to think the joke’s particularly funny. 

“I’m Derrick Krueger,” he says and waits, like that’s supposed to mean something to her. She shrugs and he inhales sharp before continuing, “I’m the one who replaced you.” 

Jaylen just stares at him for a long moment. _Nobody fucking replaced me_ is, stupidly, the first thought that she can manage. For some reason it just didn’t occur to her that of course somebody stepped out of the dugout after her ashes floated away on the crisp early fall wind, of course somebody took her place in the rotation and pitched her games and got drinks afterwards with her teammates. She guesses she’d thought she left some irreparable break in it all, some missing piece, some tear in the fabric that couldn’t get patched over. She thought she had been essential. 

“Huh,” she says. “Why haven’t I heard of you?” He doesn’t answer, but she follows his eyes to the scoreboard. Turns her back on him and steps to the edge of the dugout to get a closer look. 

No clear answers written there on the vast screen, but she scans for his name anyway. Of course he’s nowhere near the glowing blue line. He hovers somewhere around the back half of the middle. Not the worst. Just entirely forgettable. Jaylen’s noticing a theme. 

“Well, that must suck,” she says and means it because it _does_ , but the words come out cold and just straight up _bitchy_ and she doesn’t bother to apologize. The guy probably hates her anyway, not that she can really blame him. Or do anything about it, for that matter. She’s already the villain in his non-story. 

“It does, actually, yeah,” he says, voice tight. “I can’t even _try_ to get their attention now. I’m just another fucking name on the board. Bet barely any of them were even around to see me play.” 

“Oh, because _that_ would’ve won them over,” she throws out idly, some final vestige of a time in her life where jokes were jokes instead of sparks in brushland. It’s not even the worst thing she’s said this whole conversation but then there are footsteps behind her and she turns just in time for Derrick to plant his hands on her collarbones and shove her backward, hard. 

She manages to catch herself before she falls on her ass entirely, staggering a few steps, and then lunges forward again, and there’s no blood rushing in her ears to drown it out but still she barely even registers the shouts of the other dead players; all her focus narrows down to the single point of Derrick Krueger, the absolute fucking _nothing_ who took up her space in the world for over a year. 

Her knuckles crack into jawbone and he grunts and stumbles but hardly misses a beat, twisting under her arm while she’s still shaking out her hand and slamming his shoulder into her stomach. She goes down like a goddamn brick and lies there for a moment, dazed, as he pushes himself upright again on top of her, eyes wild. 

“What the _fuck?”_ she screams at him, struggling up onto an elbow, and she can feel the vicious, crazed smile on her face, open-mouthed and panting. She hasn’t felt this alive since—fuck, she doesn’t even know how long it’s been. 

He doesn’t reply but hits her again, this time in the mouth, and she can taste the blood pooling behind her teeth almost instantly. Still, she ducks the next blow and reaches up and claws at his face, vindictive pride coursing through her when her nails bite into skin and score toward his chin. Her fingers make tracks down his cheeks like tears. She’s shriek-laughing, she realizes distantly, the way she used to on the kind of rollercoaster that makes you feel like you’re flying or about to die or both, high-pitched and breathless and terrified. She wrenches her body around, elbows jabbing back, to shake him off her and then kicks at his chest, knocking him back across the mud to land flat on his back. It’s like burning again but in reverse. Jaylen licks her own blood off her lips and keeps laughing. 

Throws herself at him, then, pins him down with knees on his chest, swings at his face. She catches his cheekbone and his fist comes around again, gets her in the nose, and her face explodes in white-hot pain but she doesn’t get off him, she won’t. Blood splatters the front of his gray jersey and drips down hers, perfect mirror, and she’s not thinking about fighting dirty or playing the right angle for the camera or losing just to give somebody their goddamn redemption arc, just to prove that she’s still fucking _good,_ still _worth_ it, she’s not thinking about anything at all, she’s slamming her knuckles into his forearms until she bleeds because he’s guarding his face like a fucking _coward_ now, she wishes he would show his goddamn teeth, wishes he would try to tear her the fuck apart, and he’s trying to choke something out but she doesn’t care, she doesn’t fucking care she doesn’t fucking care she’s gonna tear the motherfucker apart—

Somebody’s hands are grabbing her by the armpits and hauling her off him, dragging her up to her feet, and she can feel her throat going raw from the shouting but she can’t hear a goddamn thing. 

“—Jaylen, Jaylen, Jesus Christ what’s _wrong_ with you—” 

“—is she _okay?_ Oh my God, somebody check on the other guy, he’s beat to shit—” 

“—can people die twice? Because he’s looking kinda—” 

“I’m fine, I’m _fine,_ don’t worry about me. _God—”_

“Someone run and get him a First Aid kit, holy—”

“Jaylen? Can you hear me?” 

She’s panting like she can still actually breathe, chest heaving, and agony flares across her face so bright she can barely see and her head is pounding and she wishes her hands would just stop shaking. _I win,_ she thinks. _I win._

Her mouth tastes like copper when she finally answers. “I can hear you fine.” 

“What happened?” 

“Some idiot ran at me, tried to throw a punch. I fought back.” 

“You can’t just...” 

Jaylen snorts, spits blood onto the ground and watches it soak into the dirt. “Can’t just what? Fucking _defend_ myself?” 

“I didn’t mean y—but not like _that,_ I—Jaylen, he looks like he got _mauled.”_

A deafening crash of thunder after lightning splits the sky into shattered glass, and, following some grim learned instinct from the last decade, Jaylen looks instantly to the scoreboard. The first fourteen names glow a blue so blinding they almost look white. Her name is at the top. 

She grins red, and she begins to dissolve into light. 

Derrick’s struggled to his feet now, bloody and bruised and covered in mud, and he’s looking at her like some essential part of him has been scraped out with a knife. She starts to laugh again. 

His face twists into a tired, broken smile. “See you later, Jaylen. Only a matter of time.” 

Maybe he says something else before she’s gone. Jaylen doesn’t hear it. The roar of the crowd crescendoes in her ears with her pulse and drowns out all else. She steps out onto a new field, and the whole goddamn world cheers her name.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! my blaseball tumblr is @fourteenthidol if you wanna find me there (and maybe give me another prompt!), and if you chose to comment it'd make my day!


End file.
